polymers built using "synth-organic" amino acids would be highly resistant to biological degradation, since no organism would have a metabolic pathway to digest them.
good point. the idea of species being an abstraction of population dynamics makes sense to me. use of the term species is an attempt to impose a 'type' upon populations varying in many ways and degrees (i.e. sympatric and allopatric subspecies almost indistiguishable phenotypically, yet exhibiting little gene-flow - both examples in incipent speciation)
understood this way, the concept of species, when unburdened from the load of intrinsic meaning, becomes much less problematic. such abstractions are only as valid only insofar as they are useful. and, of course, this concept IS very useful.
actually, it's populations that evolve, not genes (as another poster has stated). species are an abstraction of populations.
read "what evolution is" mayr, 2000.
guess there must be flys (flies?) in space, too - otherwise, they'd have to feed the spiders goo from tubes, which they probably wouldn't care for too much.
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polymers built using "synth-organic" amino acids would be highly resistant to biological degradation, since no organism would have a metabolic pathway to digest them.
good point. the idea of species being an abstraction of population dynamics makes sense to me. use of the term species is an attempt to impose a 'type' upon populations varying in many ways and degrees (i.e. sympatric and allopatric subspecies almost indistiguishable phenotypically, yet exhibiting little gene-flow - both examples in incipent speciation) understood this way, the concept of species, when unburdened from the load of intrinsic meaning, becomes much less problematic. such abstractions are only as valid only insofar as they are useful. and, of course, this concept IS very useful.
actually, it's populations that evolve, not genes (as another poster has stated). species are an abstraction of populations. read "what evolution is" mayr, 2000.
guess there must be flys (flies?) in space, too - otherwise, they'd have to feed the spiders goo from tubes, which they probably wouldn't care for too much.